Pear Tree

Loving this bar. so cosy. one of my favourites! tapas are expensive but perfect for drinks

The Pear tree is pretty much a chav free zone that has a better clientèle than the average pub in Roath, it’s promoting a wine bar approach and more often than not it is very busy and has a warm comfortable atmosphere, my only gripes are the limited selection of lager on draft and the tables at peak times are slow to be cleaned.
The staff are warm and friendly but I think Brains brewery should employ more to help out at peak times.

I had heard good things about the pear tree and its selection of real ales and fine cuisine. How ever the «cant be arsed» Attitude of the staff and the inconsistency of the food really lets the place down. They waited until i had ordered my starters and main course to tell me that the aubergine gratin was not being served. Obviously i wasn’t born yesterday. We all know that when something is advertised on the menu but then 10 minuits after you order it some snotty nosed waiter comes up to your table, interrupts you offeres some half assed apology about how they cant be bothered to actually do their job and cook some food. I had to go for my second choice which was some sorry looking heated up burger in a stale bun with cheap soggy Tesco’s french fries on the side. There wasn’t even enough mayonaise to drown my sorrows in. Desert was even worse. Clearly heated up in a microwave. Disgusting.
Brains stick to what you know and keep producing M.O.R Ale.

Had food there in the day. Paid £5.92 for a Welsh Breakfast. I got half a small fresh plum tomato mildly warmed. Quarter, yes quarter of a not so large mushroom. I mean how tight do you have to be to consciously cut a flat mushroom into four and divide between 4 breakfasts. A sausage, 2 bits of cheap bacon and an egg served on half a flat muffin which was also on top of a piece of unbuttered toast for some bizarre reason. To make the plate seem more substantial there was also some fried Paxo type stuffing. It couldn’t have cost more than £1 in ingredients. My girlfriend had Eggs Benedict. Came with two scraps of Proscuitto on top of two half’s of a small muffin which were made soggy by some boiled green mess I suspect was either spinach or water cress. The hollandaise sauce was flavourless and the whole dish was lukewarm. £5:25, equally overpriced. Probably good for a drink in but the food was overpriced and terrible. You can go into one of the many good café’s around Cathays and get a substantial well cooked meal for the same price.

Me and the family paid a quick curiosity visit just after it opened, this Lounge clone. Whoever said it is right — Brains have some cojones to open this concept café-​bar on the same block as the Juno Lounge. Nonetheless, when Juno is full we often have to look elsewhere for some food before the baba wakes up, so it’s always good to have alternatives, even if the alternative is pretty much the same — same food, same décor — but comes with the whiff of freshly bohemianised Dulux. It wasn’t full on the Saturday we visited (around 1pm) but it was getting there. It goes to show just how much the people of Roath need feeding that a new venue is busy almost the minute the door opens. However, it may as well have been rammed to the rafters.
Whilst enjoying spotting Juno Lounge staff surreptitiously checking out this new identikit competitor, we ordered two falafel burgers (the combination of squidgy, overly doughy bread, rather gritty hummus and dry falafel was a real mouth parcher) and a platter of antipasti to share — pretty expensive too, though the receipt has already gone in the shredder so specifics escape me. When, one pint of the lovely if expensive Brains Black and an elderflower presse later — around 45 minutes by the missus’ watch — we politely enquired what was taking so long, some lanky streak bowed obsequiously across our table, after first failing to understand our concern, to tell us he was looking into it as a matter of utmost importance. We then had the manager (?) do pretty much the same, but still had to wait a further 15 minutes for food to arrive, lukewarm. This after one of the now ubiquitous Brains employees (you know the one — you’ve noticed him in pretty much every Brains pub you’ve ever been in around the city centre) got a little shirty when he came bearing cutlery and a query as to how many of us were lunching, and at my moth-​eaten joke that the baby had already had his lunch! That time-​honoured comedic classic! The cheek. Still, I got a free coffee out of it, But, oh! It was a Costa coffee, that bitter, fetid Italian brew that is served to uncomprehending consumers at WHSmiths and to vapid commuters in train stations across Britain.
The result is a rather perfunctory (if garrulous) rejection of the place. I knows what I likes and I don’t likes this. I have a soft spot for Brains, after working in the Heath to finance continued post-​student drinking habits, but standards have slipped since I left, and price fixing on match days (admittedly not at issue here) leaves me cold. Kudos for bravery, but when judged even against the modest service standards of the lovely but laisser faire chaps at Juno these guys will need to get much better much quicker. I may return, to review my distasteful impressions, but consider this sacred cow slain, for now.

I like the Pear Tree more than I dislike it and I so want to like it. It has a great selection of beer — yay — continental and Brains bottles behind the bar. The ambience is nice and the staff are friendly. Much like Juno the food is a little disappointing. Today I ordered the poached salmon with lemon crème fraîche and watercress with side salad. Focaccia was nice. The salmon lacked any seasoning and I could hardly taste any lemon, and there was no watercress. No one mentioned this and no one even checked to see if our meals were okay during the two hours we were there. Okay, minor points you might think but when you get to 35 it’s the minor points that matter! Anyway, i don’t want to be too hard on the place as its quite lovely for a relaxing drink, but don’t expect to be impressed by the food. The menu is trying too hard to be something it’s not.
Last time i came here i had the burger and chips, the chips were luke warm and the burger not that great. But saying that, anywhere local that sells Leffe, SA, SA gold, peroni, Amstel, budvar, Sagres and Estrella can’t be all that bad.

Came here on a saturday afternoon, and it was almost full. Seemed a nice ambience, but when we went to order food, we were told that it would take a minimum of an hour. An HOUR!
The food menu isn’t even that expansive, with quick easy food. How long can it take to cook a burger, or assemble a tapas platter? Clearly the Pear Tree does not have the kitchen capacity/​serving staff to deal with peak periods, and for a lounge diner this is frankly unforgivable.
Such a badly planned venue is a fundamentally sloppy mistake for a chain such as Brains.
We went to the Juno Lounge instead.

Good on you Brains. You’ve opened a new bar in the last week and already it is heaving.
Here, the refreshing vocals provided by locals chatting and laughing work in just the right balance with the chill-​out instrumentals playing in the background. Everywhere you look, fashionable groups of young people seem to be drinking in the atmosphere with as much enthusiasm as a Welsh rugby fan with a pint of Brains Smooth.
But if it’s not Brains you want, there are a range of continental lagers on the menu. Also tucked behind the bar are a tempting array of bottled beers and a selection of absolutely gorgeous looking soft drinks. Forget Louis Roederer Cristal Brut Champagne or Diamonds-​Are-​Forever Cocktails. I feel the real sign of a classy bar is the presence of Bottlegreen Elderflower Cordial and Fentimans Ginger Beer. A bar that cares for all its customers is a bar to be commended.
URBAN CHALLENGE: Decide what to eat within a minute of looking at the menu. Harder than it sounds.

As already noted here, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then Juno Lounge must be blushing at this brand spanking café bar 30 seconds down the street on the corner of Wellfield Road. The two are almost identically intentioned, though Pear Tree might actually win out on lower pretension levels, both in general vibe and the pleasant staff. It also undercuts Juno on what seems like the majority of prices. The early evening weekday tapas deals are particularly pocket-​friendly and well executed too. Owners Brains have been quite cute in the way they have pitched the place, outwardly disassociating it from the brewery’s usual chain of matter-​of-​fact pubs, instead aligning it with sister bar the Lime Tree in Chepstow — to casual drinkers it must feel like an independent joint. A few of the poor displaced regulars from the building’s previous occupiers — rough-​as-​a-​scouring-​pad-​to-​the-​face pub Billabong — haven’t quite cottoned on yet, glaring at a bar landscape they don’t quite want to understand with daytime pints in hand. But only a glass-​smashing sociopath would think that Pear Tree isn’t a vast improvement to its predecessor. And Juno certainly has some competition on its hands.

Ooh, look at Brains going all café-​bar-​tastic!
Sam E has summed up this brand new establishment perfectly. It fits in very comfortably in an area that’s home to trendy students, young families, and yummy mummies with time to lunch with their friends.
There’s wi-​fi, a choice of board games, a freshly squeezed orange juice machine, plenty of lush plants, and jars of olives by the bar. All very respectable.
It’s not the type of Brains drinking den where you’ll find Curry & A Pint promotions — more ‘Tapas & A Drink’ (for £7.95 between 5pm and 7pm from Monday to Friday). But I think it’s a shrewd move on the brewery’s part to open up this type of hybrid café-​bar establishment where you can enjoy a good cup of coffee OR a pint, take small children if you want to, and have a decent conversation over lunch and a glass of wine.

Wellfield Road. Dark wood floors. Terracotta walls. Rustic wooden furniture. Boardgames. Highchairs. Chalkboard with specials on. Slightly unusual beer on tap. Black and white pictures on the wall. The murmurs and whirrs of polite conversation and coffee machines.
I’ve been here before but it only opened yesterday? How could this be?
Then it hits me. It’s like déjà vu all over again. Juno Lounge.
Can you copyright a pub? If you can then Juno should have done it because Brains have made no secret where they got their inspiration from. To plonk it on the same block shows some cajones.
So you get free wi-​fi and a selection of warm filled focaccias. The beer is in the three pound ballpark — Amstel, 45, the elusive Brains Black, the increasingly common Stowford Press, Brains Bitter and a guest called Grumpy Landlord on pull with Peroni clocking in at £3.95. They have nuts and olives in huge jars rather than in packets. There’s a patisserie display and a fresh orange juice and smoothie machine. Service is a bit slow and awkward, but they’ll gel with time.
Knick-​knacks, bric-​à-​brac, give the (guide) dog a bone. Arcane books that will never be read. A spiral staircase that ascends to a quieter seating area and descends to the toilets. Big plants and a candle on every table. Lamps, lamps and more lamps.
The Pear Tree is for sophisticated students, for young families for whom a Harvester doesn’t cut the mustard, for the twitterati, for anyone for whom Moon Safari is a cornerstone in their collection.
This is the new drinking culture according to Brains. Bow down or bog off.